VIDEO: Fuji FinePix XP170 Overview – One Tough and Talented Camera

Vacations can be tough on cameras, whether it is the cold snow of winter or the warmth of a sandy beach. Mother Nature is not always the best of friends with digital imaging technology and a camera’s lens. To keep a few steps ahead of the elements and reduce digital anxiety, manufacturers are developing “ruggedized” cameras that are battle-ready for whatever Mother Nature has to offer while often incorporating some unique designs and features.

DigitalCameraReview recently reviewed the Fuji FinePix XP170, testing the performance and capabilities of this relatively inexpensive camera that is said to be waterproof, dustproof and even freezeproof. Site editor Laura Hicks provides a quick look at this tough little camera in this video overview.

Hi, this is Laura Hicks from DigitalCameraReview.com. I just wanted to do a quick video for you of the Fuji FinePix XP170. It’s from Fuji’s rugged line of cameras. It’s waterproof, shockproof, freeze proof and also dustproof. I’m going to just show you some of the features real quick.

On the outside you can tell here, it has a very rubberized, but hard plastic type of case around it. It’s got it around three sides. On this side of it right here, it’s got a waterproof feature to house the battery and your SD card. To unlatch it, you just go like that. We actually just got finished doing a water test with it and you can tell there’s no water in it at all. We did wipe off the outside of it first before this video, but that’s all.

The one that we have that we’re doing comes in orange. It’s got a lot of physical features and physical buttons on it. As you can tell, this is different than a lot of the line of cameras that are coming out now that are all touch screen. This one is not. It’s got a little latch here that you can put a camera strap on to and you can tell we just dropped it. It’s pretty rugged, so it’s not going to do anything.

Also, I want to show you some video in just a minute of what we did with our water test. It was able to take pictures underwater. It was able to take video underwater, come back out and play the video for us and it still works now.

I’ll show you real quick. Power on. On the screen here, there’s the menu options here. All the shooting modes are right in here. As you can see it has a wide range of shooting options. It has ‘night’ as well as underwater options, too. You do not need any special housing for it because it is all waterproof.

The scene recognition is kind of a souped-up auto mode. At the bottom there, when I first hit this button, you can tell it kind of comes up with multiple options down here and it will pick what option is best for the scene that you have. It’s saying right now that the macro option is the best for this scene.

All right, so we’re going to videotape the Fuji. We’re going to videotape it videotaping underneath the water. We’re going to go ahead and start the video up. Okay, all right, now we’re going to show you the video that it took from under the water. Go ahead, push play. All right, as you can see, the video was pretty loud.

It sounded like there was a bunch of bombs dropping in the video. It is very loud, the volume is, but it was able to capture it underwater and when we were done, it played the video just fine. As you can see, it has water coming off of it, but it’s done a really good job of being able to still do what it’s supposed to do.